So! Emotional Intelligence! If you are unfamiliar with it, I strongly advise that you explore it because Emotional Intelligence is a critical component of good leadership.

Very basically, The Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EI) allows you to identify, understand and manage your emotions and use them to create rich relationships in your organization and, of course, in other areas of your life too.

After that, the idea of Emotional Intelligence moved from its fuzzy place in psycho-babble land into the mainstream where leaders and others everywhere found it to have some very real, valuable and practical application.

In a nutshell, EI helps us to examine and understand ourselves on four fronts:

Self-awareness

Self-Management

Social Awareness

Relationship Management

When leaders are self aware it means that they have a pretty good handle on how their emotions affect others; their strengths and limitations and; their ability to accept challenges with confidence.

Leaders who self-manage well are generally controlling their more disruptive emotions and impulses. More specifically, when crises happen, people who have the ability to self-manage well, do not panic or put everyone else in a tizzy. And believe me, that is something to strive for! Among other things, Self management is also about transparency. That means that they are clear about their feelings and actions and ‘fess up when they mess up.

Leaders who are socially aware, demonstrate empathy for others; are usually good at picking up on things like atmospheres and body language and; appreciate and use diversity positively.

Finally, leaders who manage relationships well tend to be good at motivating and inspiring others. They maintain a positive influence on the people around them and take a genuine and active interest in their development. Good relationship managers are also good at leading people through change and managing conflict. And they are collaborators and team builders extraordinaire. Whew!

Okay, so the number of leaders that excel in all these areas is rare indeed. So don’t panic. But, the EI Quotient gives us a benchmark for goal setting and improvement. And that can only be a good thing.

So how Emotionally Intelligent are you? Check out this web-site and for a small fee, you can find out!

2 responses to “Know Thyself Part II – Smart Emotions”

I’m the CEO and founder of http://www.BuildDirect.com and I am a big fan of your blog. This post is another great one. Self awareness is a huge part of true success, as it leads to authenticity.
Awareness that almost everything in your life (friends, love, success, etc) is a direct reflection of how you feel about yourself allows you to make changes in yourself to achieve anything you want.